Romancing Pigeons

The Deconstruction of the Dating-Sim in HatofulBoyfriendNicolle Lamerichs

Interspecies Romance

When pictures circulated online of a dating game that starred doves,many gamers suspected it to be a hoax. Promotional screenshots forthe game portrayed photographs of actual birds, copied on illustratedbackgrounds of class rooms and parks. The quality of the screenshotsmade this inter-species dating-sim seem quite unlikely. It had to be aspoof, except that it was not.

Hatoful Boyfriend (MIST[PSI]PRESS, 2011) gained popularity andcritical attention through a play through by Angie Gallant at Quarterto Three forums increased the popularity of the game (Fahey, 2011).Bedridden, she started playing the game on November 28, 2011, andposted a “Let’s Play” account of screenshots with engaging and funnycomments. Many fans and reviewers became acquainted with thegame not by playing it, but by reading Angie’s hilarious walkthrough.Hatoful Boyfriend quickly became a cult favourite among fans ofJapanese popular culture and beyond. At first mistaken as a bad game,fans were surprised to find something unique.

The game is deceptively weird. While its surface, particularly theconcept and visuals, seem to create its strangeness and ambiguity,the actual weird resides in its deconstruction of the dating-sim genre.In this close-reading, I analyze the unusual storytelling, structureand mechanics of this bizarre parody game and explore the tropesand conventions of Japanese popular culture which are subverted todetermine this a strange dating-sim.

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Figure 1. The opening menu of Hatoful Boyfriend frames it as cute andromantic through pink hearts.

Hatoful Boyfriend

Hatoful Boyfriend (Hātofuru Kareshi) is an “otome visual novel”,more specifically a dating-sim catered to girls, created by Hato Moa.Instead of featuring human or anthropomorphic anime characters, itstars pigeons. When these characters are introduced, however, theyare accompanied with a personification of design. The creator firstcame up with the concept for Hatoful Boyfriend as a 2011 AprilFools’ Day joke and launched a pilot as a Flash game. Followingits immense popularity, the creator finalized the game at October 30,2011 in the engine FamousWriter. The title of the game plays withthe words “heartful” (or “hurtful”) in English and hato which meanspigeon or dove. An English-translation patch was released after atranslator, Nazarine, was hired by the creator.

In Heartful Boyfriend, the protagonist is a cave girl who attendsthe all-pigeon academy, St. Pigeonations, “by pigeons, for pigeons”.The girl, whose default name is Hiyoko Tosaka, feels privileged

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to attend the school and explains that it is “the world’s, greatestgathering-place for gifted birds”. The narrative of the game dependson the romance that the player pursues with different love interestsbranching the narrative. By romancing one of the characters – bytaking him to a festival, providing gifts, and standing up for himduring key moments – the player can follow a specific plot lineand connect with one of the birds. Some of the romances and theiroutcomes also depend on how the player increased her skills whichare divided in “wisdom”, “vitality” and “charm”. The plot lines revealparticular backgrounds, problems or secrets of the birds that can beamusing and even emotional or shocking.

The characters that you can date include Ryouta Kawara, a greypigeon that you have known since childhood (see figure 2); KazuakiNanaki, a white dove and your sleepy math teacher; Iwamine Shuu,a partridge and extremely creepy doctor; Nagaki Fujishiro; a shyboy in the library; Oko-san, your pudding-obsessed coach; SakuyaLe Bel Shirogane, a white quill and an aristocratic transfer student;Yuuya Sakazaki, the charming half-brother of Sakuya. Interspeciesromance aside, the game is a highly unusual, one constructed aroundan obscure story world. As the cave girl motif suggests, mankindappears to have regressed in its civilization. This is also supportedby key moments in the game. When you go for a run, for instance,images of a destroyed town appear. During the romances, it becomesclear that the relationship between humans and birds is a complicatedone. The plot lines of Shuu and Yuuya explain that among birds,there are different political factions. The school is embedded in thispolitical conflict, as Yuuya explains:

The Dove Party believes we should live peacefully withthe remaining humans, while the Hawk Party believes weshould exterminate them to make room for birds. St.Pigeonation´s is actually a secret experimental institutecreated by the Hawks

When the player has completed these different dating routes, a newroute can be unlocked – the Hurtful Boyfriend route – which explains

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the background story. The world of Hatoful Boyfriend is describedas post-apocalyptic, devastated by a war between birds and humans.The cause of this war was the lethal bird flu H1N5 that humanstried to counter with another virus. Though their purpose was to wipeout the birds, the virus had unusual side effects. Pigeons becameintelligent and started to fight back, leading to a war that lasted fornearly forty years. As a result, birds became the dominant specieson earth. This story line also describes the death of Hiyoko’s parentsdue to a political incident. As members of the Human LiberationFront, struggling for more freedom for humans, they took control ofa bird orphanage, which escalated. Apparently, Hiyoko was put in St.Pigeonation’s as a human representative to see if humans and birdscould again form meaningful bonds together. I will detail this highlyunusual storyline further below.

Though my primary focus is Hatoful Boyfriend, I should note thatthe franchise is not limited to the game alone. A larger narrative istold across different media platforms and games. This process hasalso been described as “transmedia storytelling” by Henry Jenkins,a term which was increasingly popularized amongst academics andmarketers alike (Jenkins, 2003, 2006). A sequel to the original game,Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star (2012) was released with aChristmas theme as well as three drama CDs in which voice actorsperform the pigeon characters. The designer, Hato Mao, alsoproduced a manga with four-panel gag comics (“yonkoma”) and shortstories.

Though none of these products are necessary to make sense of thegame, they do deepen the background of the characters and revealaspects of the story world. While the initial game can be consumedautonomously, it is linked quite directly to other media texts. Forinstance, at a certain point the character Yuuya recommends a blog(http://pigeonblog.wordpress.com/) on pigeon life style, written bythe critically acclaimed author Brian Pigeon. The player is asked tovisit this WordPress and explore the world of doves through the eyesof Brian, an urban blogger in London, and of the first intelligent

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pigeons. By presenting this blog and its author as real, HatofulBoyfriend attempts to break the fourth-wall of its fiction.

The game particularly fits in a tradition of contemporary Japanesepopular culture. In this type of storytelling, characters remain ratherflat and circulate across media as specific tropes. Hiroko Azuma(2009) even argued that Japanese popular culture operates as adatabase, where specific tropes occur again and again. Cat girls andshy men with glasses are but two examples of such fan-favoritetropes, or “moe” in Japanese, that manifest over and over again.Hatoful Boyfriend rewards the player with knowledge of particulartropes of Japanese culture. Sakuya, for instance, is distant at first butslowly grows romantically attached to the main character – a tropethat is often described as “tsundere”. The player who is versed in thegenre of dating-sims will recognize many stylistic features in HatofulBoyfriend, but rearranged into something new and utterly bizarre.

Hatoful Boyfriend might seem like a parody. At first sight, it spoofsdating-sims and indulges in overly dramatic plotting at points.Nonetheless, the intent seems to be genuine and heartfelt. Dependingon the characters that you choose the date, the themes may shiftcompletely from slice-of-life, to detective drama, to murder plots.In the extended version, the new character Anghel even changes theentire setting to a turn-based role-playing game that sports epic music.Hatoful Boyfriend appeals to the knowledgeable gamer through thesetropes and genre spoofs.

While the game may sound silly, it is highly engaging. As yougradually get to know the different characters and their stories, yousee them less as pigeons and more as individuals. Though some of theromances are pure comedy – like dating the pudding obsessed Oko-san who wants to turn the whole world into jelly – its ambiguity oftenmakes for interesting and dark game play. As you progress, the worlditself becomes less bizarre and more tragic. Hatoful Boyfriend maytake conventional dating games and Japanese character tropes as itsstarting point, but ultimately it aspires to create a holistic story worldof its own – a mixture of the cute and the dark.

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Figure 2. The player can date his childhood friend Ryouta and furtherunderstand his background story.

Weird Cuteness

Aesthetically, the style of the game relies heavily on cuteness. Thedifferent design choices – the wings behind the date, the swirls inthe text box (see figure 2) – frame it in the genre of dating games.The menu (see figure 1) already echoes the soft and sweet style ofotome visual novels and shoujo fiction in general with conventionalsymbols such as sparkly glitter and hearts. The logo reflects this aswell through its pink and purple color scheme, with a flying heart inthe background. Even the line under “Hatoful” is underscored with afleur-de-lis symbol.

These “kawaii” or cute motives are also present in the game itself.Instead of sprites, or even drawings of pets, the player sees actualpictures of pets. This might seem hilarious and camp. In Japan,though, such pet photographs are perceived as cute and therefore have

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a distinct connotation. The combination of art and photography ofpets is not a strange thing. At Comiket, as I observed in 2012, thereis an entire sub-genre of self-published comics or “doujinshi” in thisstyle created by owners about their pets. These semi-biographicalworks may feature short comics, pictures of cats that have beendoodled on, or little diaries of the adventures of their rabbits. Inother words, when Western people see Hatoful Boyfriend, they mightbe confused by this mixed media approach. This type of fiction isnot unconventional in the strategies of Japanese media mix (Ito,2005). Moreover, the pigeons are naturalized already during theirintroduction. Next to their photograph, the player sees ananthropomorphic interpretation of them as pretty boys or “bishounen”(see figure 3). Only Oko-san is not that intelligent and thereforerepresented by a pigeon image rather than a bishounen.

Hatoful Boyfriend presses us to decode the birds as human but alsoplays at their appearance and life style as birds. When you hear thatan egg got crushed, or that pigeons do not live long, you suddenlybecome aware of their birdness again. This creates an uncanny storyat points, as the desire to anthropomorphize these characters oftenhides their animal features.

This cuteness, then, may also be unsettling. When analyzing theaesthetics of cuteness, Sianne Ngai (2005) says that this is exactlythe point. Cute is a style of exaggeration and parody. It is often away to translate eerie and dark feelings that are partly masked, butby masking them, these features become even more overt. The kawaiistyle – bright and big eyes, colorful hairdos, detailed faces – fits inthese aesthetics quite clearly, but these visuals often provide a groundfor darker motifs. This is also the case in Hatoful Boyfriend, whichmasquerades as a cute and deviant dating game at first sight, butquickly becomes something else entirely.

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Figure 3. The characters are introduced in their pigeon form and as bishounen

From Adorable to Eerie Interaction

The outcomes of the different romances in Hatoful Boyfriend rangefrom comical to romantic to extremely dark. Romancing Oko-san,for instance, ends in a quest for the both of you to obtain the fabled,seven-colored pudding. The other romances are less humorous andoften have a sad twist. Sakuya, for instance, slowly reveals how hisfather, a nobleman, constantly pressures him into becoming head ofthe family, while Sakuya actually aspires to become a musician. Youcan support him in his musical career. The mood of this romance iscaptured in this quote: “I don’t know if his father will accept him, orif he really will run away. But, I know he will come back to me andI pray that our future will be a happy one.” If you obtained the goodending, Sakuya becomes a successful musician but a casual referenceis made that Sakuya is not who he thinks that he is. Dating your mathteacher, Nanazaki, leads to a situation in which you eventually finda photograph of a person he loved, defaced by a marker. These plot

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twists are all important for the end game Hurtful Boyfriend in whichthese points are connected.

To romance the characters, the player has to stand up for them duringkey moments. These moments often reveal something of the real plotline that is going on behind the scenes. You find an ID tag of a loststudent; you hear the rumors that students are turned into food; younote the obscure files in the infirmary. In these cases, it is up toyou how you deal with the situation and depending on who you areromancing, you may need to make a specific choice. If, for example,you see Doctor Shuu walking around at midnight, it is often best notto pay him close attention, unless you want to provoke him.

One of the more melancholic romances is shared with Nageki. As youslowly spend time with him in the library, he opens up to you, andyou suspect he is being bullied. When he tries to get out of the library,eventually, it turns out that an invisible wall blocks him. Nageki turnsout to be a ghost who committed suicide a long time ago. “I killedmyself in this room. And so here I stay,” Nageki remarks sadly, butyou can help him let go.

The darkest romance, perhaps not surprisingly, is with the scientistShuu Iwamine. As the partridge becomes more fond of you, yourealize that he is quite twisted. In this romance, the player needs to bechoose between the doctor and Yuuya, who is trailing Shuu as a DoveParty agent. Choosing Shuu also means that you often stumble intohim in the park at midnight or around the school property as he admitsdisposing of things he “no longer needs”. At the festival, you bumpinto Shuu again near the incinerator. A day later, Yuuya is missingand you are asked to replace him. “My heart’s racing but I can’t tellif it’s love or fear for my life!” The romance turns bad pretty quicklyaround Christmas when you get a special present: a real white birdfeather that, you gleefully note, “looks pricey” and a roast that you eathappily.

On Valentine’s Day, you notice that there is something amiss at theinfirmary. “At the foot of the bed sits a washbasin, its liquid pink,

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with a stack of scissors coated in blood and feathers in the bottom.The blood on the bed is still wet.” Shuu tells you: “I just finisheddismembering another student, and hadn’t cleaned up yet. Please, payit no mind.” He finally asks you how Yuuya’s carcass tasted. “I wasafraid he’d be a little tough.” You realize that the roast that he sentyou for Christmas was Yuuya’s body. Shuu tells you that he onlyenjoys his research and does not want any trouble. He highly respectsyou. “Just cutting you up would be a terrible pity… and I think I wantto keep you by my side. Forever. I shall preserver only your head. Iwill make sure I study your insides most…intimately.”

The final scene depicts Shuu on the run for the Hawk Agents, since heapparently upset his own fraction by preserving your head. As he runsthrough the park with your decapitated head, Shuu admits: “I thinkperhaps I have felt new emotions, since I acquired you.” In a highlydisturbing moment, Shuu asks you if you loved him. You can chooseout of three options, but all of them say “yes”. This option, in whichthe control is actively taken from the player, gives a meaningful andeerie touch to this mad romance.

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Figure 4. The player can only confess his love to Shuu

Darkening the Dating-Sim

After dating the pigeons, the player can open a new game whichoffers the option to “fulfill an old promise”, which unlocks HurtfulBoyfriend. At this point, the protagonist changes to Ryouta, after youhave played with Hiyoko for several months. After a fade-to-black,a new day starts and the pigeons remark Hiyoko’s absence. Kazuakilectures the birds on the long-lasting conflicts between humans andpigeons, started by the virus that was supposed to exterminate allpigeons but instead gave them intelligence. When Ryouta goes to afile cabinet, he discovers a box covered with blood: “The eyes areglassy. But even like this, I still recognize her. She wasn’t late. Shewas here all along.” The player-character Hiyoko has died and it is upto Ryouta to solve this case.

The protagonist and perspective shift along with the genre. The playeris served with a visual novel in which romancing is no longer the

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key mechanic, instead, solving the murder mystery is. As the routestarts, a minimalist “1st class” image is shown (see figure 5) that canbe sharply contrast to the cute introductions of the 2nd and 3rd term(see figure 6). The image depicts a broken egg, symbolizing the deathof the protagonist but also incorporating some of the key aspectsof the game, such as the struggle between the birds and mankind.This image frames the game as a kind of paratext (Genette, 1997),supporting its shift in genre and dramatic motifs. Hurtful Boyfriend isthe dark deconstruction of a seemingly cute, whimsical dating game.

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Figure 5 & 6. Framing narrative time in Hurtful and Heartful.

During the first class, everyone is evacuated to the gym and the birdsare confused. The death of Hiyoko leads to many rumors and no oneexactly knows why they have to remain in the gym. Ryouta narrates:

From the snatches of conversation I hear, it sounds likeall the print boxes had pieces of a human corpse in them.Were they all pieces of Hiyoko, I wondered? Nobirdie seemsparticularly concerned. Which isn’t all that odd: it wasgrotesque, but it’s not like it was a dead bird. Just someprimate…

The internal monologues of Ryouta, now a detective, not only echothe sentiments of noir in terms of language, but also in the visual styleof the game. While Heartful frequently showed us level backgroundsor sparkles during Hiyoko’s interior monologues, Hurtful provides anempty background (see figure 7). A minimalist design is chosen witha pure black background, without any dove images or kitsch. These

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grim intermezzos befit the fate of our protagonist and the mood of thegame, which has suddenly shifted.

Figure 7. The new player-character, Ryouta, has interior monologues thatclosely resemble detective fiction.

The plot thickens when the pigeons find out that an enormous domenow surrounds the school property. Sakuya asks: “Is this really ashelter…? Is there really a natural disaster?” Ryouta and Sakuyawant to know what happened to Hiyoko and escape the gym afterthe headmaster delivers a speech. In the classroom, they find outthat Hiyoko’s remains have disappeared from the box. Yuuya tellsthe others not to worry – this is not a crime novel. “Corpses don’tdisappear, and we won’t be having a famous detective show upand find the culprit for us.” Even in these grim hours, the gamestill delivers self-reflexive puns. As it turns out, Shuu has broughtHiyoko’s remains to the infirmary for an autopsy. The birds visit thejanitor of the school, called One, who provides a clue by explainingthat Ryouta has forgotten something. They also find out that Hiyoko

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was likely poisoned because she was the “Human Representative”,who had been assigned to the school for a reason.

Apparently, the birds discover, a deal was made between the humansand birds that if anything were to happen to the HumanRepresentative, this would be the ultimate proof that birds andhumans cannot coexist. As a result, the facility would close downand humans would get several hours to arm themselves and take theirrevenge. “I rather think,” Sakuya speculates, “that this whole thingwas arranged to widen the divide between humans and birds fromthe start”. As the crime plot progresses, the birds are stalked by amysterious human figure who resembles a scarecrow.

This dark finale holds several twists for the player. Many of theserevolve around the identities of the birds, who are not who theyclaim to be or have done dark deeds in their past. The most relevantplot lines for this article, and the interpretation of the game, revolvearound the death of Hiyoko and Nageki, and the shared backgroundstories between Ryouta and Hiyoko. Nageki was apparently in a birdorphanage that was attacked by humans. A brother of his, Hitori,and him survive and room together, but Nageki is in bad shape.He receives a special invitation to St. Pigeonations, where they canhelp him with his illness. Here, he unknowingly becomes part of anexperiment with the highly lethal Charon virus.

A human would be brought to me. They would struggle, andgasp. And then, with a last, painful sigh, they would stopmoving. I knew why I was brought here. Living in my bodywas a virus deadly to humans in a matter of minutes.

Upset by the results of the virus, Nageki commits suicide. After manytrials, the protagonists get rid of scarecrow with a taser, and arecaptured by Shuu. In a villainous monologue, he explains that he hadpreserved Nageki’s remains and transplanted them in Ryouta, whohe describes as an “exemplary student”. Ryouta had been undergoingtreatment by the doctor for a while, but apparently this was to weaken

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him and make him susceptible to the virus. Ryouta realizes what hehad suppressed: Hiyoko died by the Charon virus that resided in him.

In this dark finale, Shuu reveals that the scarecrow is a specialexperiment of his to construct a new human. Though the HawkFaction found this experiment unethical, Shuu has persisted. Thescarecrow is actually Hiyoko, whose brain he had carefully preserved.He applauds Ryouta for tasering the scarecrow that had haunted them:“Yesterday her body and today her mind, you’re a far better villainthan I could ever hope to be, mister Kawara”.

The cute, romantic tropes of the dating-sim is now truly subverted.The representation of the scarecrow gains another meaning: a ghostlypresence of the previous player-character. Hiyoko still haunts us;“you” are still in the game. This haunting of the birds hints at adark romance; a deconstruction of the dating-sim altogether. Thescarecrow, who speaks in a language that we cannot understand, isthe girl that we were once attached to. The Human Representativehad the purpose to form an intimate connection with birds, but nowshe evokes anxiety. She has become a dark figure, stalking the newplayer-character. Her murder is the ultimate narrative ploy. It is inthese moments that Hatoful Boyfriend is a truly strange andsubversive dating-sim.

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Figure 8. The first player-character, Hiyoko, haunts the game as Scarecrow.

Conclusion

When buying Hatoful Boyfriend, or viewing some of its imagery,one would expect a game filled with humour. Puns like “everybirdy”,conventional glitters and rose petals steer towards an interpretationof the game as an otome dating-sim, or perhaps a cheap parody ofit. The initial plot of the game also supports such an interpretation,including the dramatic backgrounds of the characters. However, itis within the small secrets and hints that the game suddenly unfoldsitself as dark and clever. The storyline of Shuu and Nageki alreadyshow the ambiguity of the game, and its clever interaction design thatoften denies the player agency.

It is also not the only parody of dating sims in its kind. The browsergame Jurassic Heart (2013), for instance, begins when you shop fora ukulele with your best friend and potential love interest Taira, atyrannosaurus rex. Other than interspecies romance, recent games

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have also explored gourmet. The Bacon Lettuce Biographies (2013)is a school-based boy’s love story in which you date pieces of meat,while the suitors in Love! Sushi Rangers (2014) are sushi, presentedas pretty boys. The additional Hurtful Boyfriend route, however,really stands out. Within this story, the dating-sim genre is completelydeconstructed. The game can no longer be interpreted through itsoutward cuteness and eccentricity. It has become something elseentirely as the player is sucked into the sadistic and post-apocalypticuniverse of Hatoful Boyfriend. This title is not just whimsical, butallows for clever and self-reflexive play. This seemingly weird inter-species dating-sim is actually a rich visual novel, rife with interestingcharacters and meaning. It is not afraid to make risky choices in itsdesign and storytelling. If this is weirdness, then I hope that othergames can take a tack from it.

References

Azuma, H. (2009). Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals ([English ed.).Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Fahey, M. (2011). I want its Plumage, I want its Suspense, MyGame of the Year could be a Bird Romance. Retrieved fromhttp://kotaku.com/5863746/i-want-its-plumage-i-want-its-suspense-my-game-of-the-year-could-be-a-bird-romance/

Genette, G. (1997). Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ito, M. (2005). Technologies of the Childhood Imagination: Yugioh,Media Mixes, and Everyday Cultural Production. In Karaganis, J. &Jeremijenko, N. (eds.) Structures of Participation in Digital Culture.Durham: Duke University Press.

Jenkins, H. (2003). Transmedia Storytelling. Retrieved fromhttp://www.technologyreview.com/

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New MediaCollide. New York: New York University Press.

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Ngai, S. (2005). The Cuteness of the Avant-Garde. Critical Inquiry,31(4).

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